Crosses on Your Forehead

What do a cross of Chrism and one of ash have in common?

If we could not wash off the Holy water and Chrism oil from Baptism, nor the ashes from today’s liturgy we would notice that we have multiple crosses in precisely the same location on our brows. An almost invisible strand ties together today’s penitential rite and the Christian entry rite. Surprisingly, the service of Holy Baptism begins only 29 pages after the conclusion of the Ash Wednesday service; somehow though, the two feel farther and further apart than that. What binds together these crosses on our foreheads? What ties together the one made of ash and the one marked with oil?

In a few moments, you will be invited to observe a Holy Lent, and then anyone who wishes will come forward. You will be reminded that you are dust and to dust you shall return, and at that same moment burnt up branches from Palm Sundays past will be shaped into the form of a cross on your forehead. In this way, one year’s journey to the Cross fades into the next. And, for many ages Lent, which comes from a word meaning spring, has served as a time when converts blossom into full-fledge members of Christ’s Body. On one side of Lent the ashen cross and on the other at the Great Celebration of Easter the cross of oil, in between was the final formation before the church recognized one as a Christian. Ash Wednesday, Lent, and Holy Baptism, thus have been inextricably linked together, as a time of growth. And yet, is that all this season is about: personal progress?

Lent, if approached haphazardly, shifts into a short-lived season of discipline used for our own purposes of self-importance. When we make Lent a six-week season of “doing good, rather than building a Lent that becomes a life” we miss the mark.[1] As all of us, the novices and the elders alike, begin to walk the Lenten way of the Cross, we would do well to remember that Jesus’ public ministry began not with forty days of piety or self-discipline, but first within the deep, brooding waters of Baptism—waters that call to mind the depths over which God first moved to create. As there is only one Baptism, once baptized we do not enter these waters again, but Lent does allow us to be refreshed and renewed, as we repent and return to God. As we turn to God in this penitential season we may very well see the hidden feature tying Ash Wednesday, Lent, and Baptism together in an unexpected place. For these occasions are as much about death—that is turning away—as they are about new life. Somehow though, death does not play well in our culture.

Death tends to be a topic of which we steer clear at polite social gatherings. We, as a country, are so uncomfortable with death that we spend approximately $20.7 billion a year, so that those in the funeral home industry can deal with death for us.[2] Even though death comes for us all, we attempt to evade it through plans, schemes, and regimes to stay young forever. All of us go down to the dust, and much as we may want to ignore this truth, Ash Wednesday gives us an opportunity to stare death in the face, just like during Holy Baptism. Today we do not dwell morosely on our mortality, but instead as we feel the cross marked on our brows we can realize again the overwhelming reality that even in death we are Christ’s own forever.

When children, youth, and adults are marked in Baptism we tend to focus solely on the new life, but without the often overlooked death that precedes it this rite makes no sense. In Baptism we die, plain and simple. Our individualistic ways are called to cease, as God draws us up into the corporate identity of Christ. We are not just marked as Christ’s own forever, but we become part of the Body by dying to the self. As the Rev. Dr. Will Willimon puts it:

         

The chief biblical analogy for baptism is not the water that washes but the flood that drowns. Discipleship is more than turning over a new leaf. It is more fitful and disorderly than gradual moral formation. Nothing less than daily, often painful, lifelong death will do. So Paul seems to know not whether to call what happened to him on the Damascus Road “birth” or “death”—it felt like both at the same time.[3]

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A Lent following Jesus, not to mention a life following him, cannot be about making ourselves feel good because we do some new discipline or fast for a few weeks each springtime. Jesus, himself makes this clear in the culmination of his Sermon on the Mount, which we hear today. If our reward is based on impressing others because we are merciful, prayerful, or fasting, we are missing the point. Even if we are doing some great spiritual discipline off by our lonesome, if we are doing it for our own benefit, we are missing the point. “What reward are you seeking?” Jesus seems to ask, “An earthly one for your own benefit or a heavenly one that draws you ever closer to God?” Put another way, “Do not be holy because it is what the world expects of you [or even what you think is required of yourself]; rather, learn to live holy lives because a closer relationship to the God who sees in secret will be reward enough.”[4] Die to self, so that Christ may live!

Today, Christ calls us not to immortal greatness, but to ponder our mortal smallness. Remember that not only will we one day die, but also that we have already died in Baptism. The death we die in Baptism brings us into a new life—a life no longer focused on doing new things to prove ourselves worthy to others, to ourselves, or to God. This is Good News! In Lent, then we are free to explore how we may see God living and breathing anew within us.

Churches traditionally sing “Just As I Am” when they baptize folks. It’s a fantastic song, but I am partial to a line Presiding Bishop Michael Curry borrowed from Max Lucado, “God loves us where we are, but God does not intend to leave us where we are.” When we die to ourselves, not just in Lent, but throughout our lives, we experience the transforming power of God’s love. This may happen by getting rid of something that distracts us from seeing God who resides closer to us than our own heartbeat. This may happen by taking on something that focuses us on God who knows us in secret. This Lent, as your brow is marked by a cross of ash remember the other cross marked when you died in Baptism, so that Christ could live within you.

Lent is when new life abounds, for we turn away from a society obsessed with outrunning death and towards the living God who calls us to die to self, so that Christ lives. Lent is when we become less, so that Christ may become all. Let Lent permeate beyond the next 40 days. May we embrace God’s call to turn towards the Lenten path, the Cross, and those Baptismal waters where death and new life meet. May we remember that we are dust and to dust we shall return, so that we may embrace our eternal God.  May we have a holy Lent filled with God’s transforming love that meets us where we are, but brings us into the ultimate life of God.

[1] Anschutz, Maryetta. "Ash Wednesday: Pastoral Perspective." In Feasting on the Word, edited by David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, 20. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2010.

[2] Public Broadcast Service. Homegoings: The Economics of Funerals. June 24, 2013. http://www.pbs.org/pov/homegoings/economics-of-the-funeral-industry/ (accessed February 20, 2017).

[3] Willimon, William. "Repent." In Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter, 9. Walden, NY: Plough Publishing, 2003.

[4] Anschutz, Maryetta. "Ash Wednesday: Pastoral Perspective." In Feasting on the Word, edited by David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, 20. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2010.